It is a merit of our climate that at no time of the year are we, as children, shut out from healthy out-door pleasure. There are shady nooks along our creeks¹ and rivers and delightful² old mill-ponds wherein we may bathe in midsummer, and there are acres of glassy ice over which to skate in midwinter. Spring and autumn are too full of fun to particularize, the average day being available for scores of methods whereby to make life a treasure beyond compare, spending it, to the mind of a boy, in that most rational way, having sport. I do not know why we always played marbles at one time of the year and flew our kites at another: this is for the folk-lore clubs to fathom³. Suffice it, that there has been for centuries a time for every out-door amusement as fixed⁴ as the phases of the moon. So much for the sport common 98to all boys. And now a word concerning an old-time musical instrument that may be now quite out of date,—the corn-stalk fiddle⁵.

This very primitive⁶ musical instrument is associated with the dreamy Indian-summer days of late November. Then it discoursed⁷ delicious music, but at other times it would have been “out of tune⁸ and harsh.” Did the Indians give the secret to the children of our colonial forefathers⁹? It would be a pleasing thought whenever the toy comes to mind, as the mere¹⁰ suggestion is a pleasant fancy.

The husking over, the corn-stalks carted and stored in a huge rick by the barn-yard, the apples gathered, the winter wood cut, and then the long quiet, with almost nothing to do. Such was the routine when I was a boy, and if the uncertain, dreamy days would only come, there was sure to be a short round of pleasure wherein the fiddle figured more prominently than all else.

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